A nesting gigantic cassowary-like dinosaur named Beibeilong in the act of incubating its eggs. ILLUSTRATION BY ZHAO CHUANGAt the end of 1992, a farmer named Zhang Fengchen unearthed a nest of enormous dinosaur eggs—each the length from his elbow to his fingertips—in the Henan Province of central China. This nest contained a rare fossilized embryo, which was later smuggled to the United States, featured on the cover of National Geographic, sold to a museum in Indiana, and finally, after a lengthy search process, returned to its homeland.
The remarkable story of this specimen now has another chapter. Researchers reported today (May 9) the first scientific characterization of this fossil, revealing the identity of the embryo as a new species of giant oviraptorosaur, which the researchers named Beibeilong sinensis, meaning “baby dragon from China.”
Beibeilong was previous known as Baby Louie. The dinosaur got its name from the National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos, who snapped the creature for the May 1996 issue. At the time, paleontologists speculated that it might be a different giant therapod, such as Tyrannosaurus rex. Although the embryo looked like an oviraptorosaur, the eggs were eight to 10 times larger than any species known at the time.
The embryo was first spotted when Zhang’s nest—at this point, a block ...
